My name is Rev. Darriel Harris. I speak to you today as an ordained Christian

minister, and on behalf of the Baltimore Food and Faith Project, an initiative run out of Johns Hopkins University's Center for a Livable Future. Our mission is to promote a just, healthy and trustworthy food system with Baltimore area faith communities. Over the past several years we've partnered with over 70 congregations and interfaced with members from over 500 Baltimore area congregations across

different faiths and denominations.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to testify in support of the new carbon pollution standards for existing power plants.

Our current trajectory of pollutants and climate change not only threatens the physical wellbeing of our constituents, and citizens and visitors all across America, in the form of asthma and other respiratory dangers, but it also poses a significant threat to our food system.

Our weather patterns are becoming increasingly severe. Anecdotally, in the beautiful state of Maryland, my birth state and current residence, tornado watches and warnings have grown from an uncharacteristic threat to a familiar alarm. Across America, severe weather increasingly damages crops, farming machinery, and animal housings. Rising temperatures in our oceans, rivers and bays are negatively impacting the environment of our fish and other seafood. It is now undeniable that carbon pollutants significantly contribute to the danger in which we find ourselves. And it is not just a danger to breathe, but a danger to our most basic necessity and common leisurely activity; a danger to eat.

For many in Baltimore City eating is not a new challenge. Over twenty percent of Baltimore City residents live in food deserts - an area where healthy food and fresh produce is simply not accessible. Many more suffer from the reality that healthy food is not affordable. To help combat this problem, religious communities across faiths and denominations, have initiated congregational gardens to help supplement the growing food gap in Baltimore area communities. Additionally, civic groups and coalitions have joined forces to glean from area farms, setup mobile food markets, and provide education to avail fresh produce to populations where fresh produce is not readily available or not affordable. For those who wish to consume food from just, trustworthy, and environmentally friendly sources, urban and regional food has become increasingly available at farmers markets, farm to table restaurants, and Community Supported Agriculture (or CSA) drops. During this current growing season, many of these valuable, and frankly life altering efforts, were delayed and hindered by polar vortexes at the start of the growing season. The unpredictability of our weather, which impacts our agriculture and the way we eat, is a growing concern that is felt foremost by those who already find eating a challenge.

The new carbon pollution standards for existing power plants put forth by the EPA is a reasonable step to curb a portion of the pollutants that drive climate change. As I close, I am reminded of St. Francis of Assissi's understanding of neighbor. St.Francis took seriously the Lord's mandate to love his neighbor as his self. St. Francis

was able to love the least of those in his era - lepors, poppers. But he also understood that he had a kinship with all of things on the Earth, after all he too came from and would eventually return to the soil. So Francis began to understand his neighbor to be not only other people who equally relied on the Earth's outputs for life, but Earth herself. Consequently, he began to honor, respect, and become a better steward of neighbor Earth that sustained his life. It is in the tradition of St. Francis, the convictions of my Christian ministry, and the goals of the Baltimore Food and Faith Project and its' affiliates, that I thank you for the new standards of existing power plants, and implore you to enforce these standards and develop additional ways to curb carbon pollution in America.

Thank you.